OpenBSD Developers Work on AerieBSD

A group of OpenBSD developers have joined in the AerieBSD project. A new distro is being prepared whose likeness to OpenBSD is unmistakable.

The AerieBSD project page with its minimal mission statement and mailing lists is entrusted to (former) OpenBSD developer Michael Shalayeff. The team describes itself as "a group of individuals who like to hack operating systems." There is no business or corporate backing, nor are there sponsorships.

Its goals show a clear proximity to OpenBSD, starting with broad hardware support, regular release cycles, an attention to security, code correctness and adherence to standards – all of this under the leadership of Theo de Raadt. Licensing likewise has a BSD flavor. The fruits of their labor will come under BSD or ISC licenses; they consider GPL to be "counter-progressive," having proved to be "troublesome" over the years. OpenBSD project lead de Raadt has repeatedly openly criticized Linux developers and GPL. The OpenBSD songs and advertisements with "Puffy" the pufferfish are prime examples of their opposition to GPL.

Next to promoting free software and transparency, ÆrieBSD has one goal that could hint towards a conflict with de Raadt: "First of all hacking shall be fun and thus we resent any sort of political gaming and ego worshipping inside the project. If you want to be famous and naked – here be a wrong place for you."

The team is currently working on its first release with a time frame not yet announced.

The OpenBSD project has released version 4.4 of the free Unix derivative. New in this version are drivers for Intel and AMD chips, and support for platforms such as UltraSparc IV/ T1/ T2 and Fujitsu SPASRC64-V/ VI/ VIII.

No technical reasons to fork, just political.

Srikant

There are no technical reasons to fork. Seems like insider politics. But everyone has right to do so. Let us see how far this one goes. Maybe they will produce better/more code now that they like the environment in which they work. It is still BSD licensed, so no worries.

OpenBSD vs AerieBSD

NAS Data Storage

If there's such a likeness, what is the reason for forking then?

To fork you need to have some clear goals that differentiate you from the project you're forking from. Theo de Raadt started with OpenBSD to focus on security, Matt Dillon started DragonFlyBSD to concentrate on clusters etc.

Neither from this article, nor from the AerieBSD website I can find how this project is going to be different from OpenBSD.

OpenBSD vs AerieBSD

NAS

If there's such a likeness, what is the reason for forking then?

To fork you need to have some clear goals that differentiate you from the project you're forking from. Theo de Raadt started with OpenBSD to focus on security, Matt Dillon started DragonFlyBSD to concentrate on clusters etc.

Neither from this article, nor from the AerieBSD website I can find how this project is going to be different from OpenBSD.